Top Five Notable Comments in the Book Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

Awhile back, I read the book Game Change, in which two reporters persuaded a group of insiders working for presidential candidates for the 2008 primaries and election to tell all, with the proviso that revelations would all be anonymous and not revealed until after the election. I read it and made a list of the most significant revelations, and it was published on E-Verse. The same guys recently came out with a similar book about the 2012 presidential election (including primaries), called Double Down. So here are the top five most interesting comments by the authors.

5. Chris Christie could be reasonably referred to as “Bernie Madoff’s lobbyist.” They were extremely closely connected and Madoff donated a lot to his campaign (he was the US attorney for New Jersey at the time). Just to be clear: Christie was not involved in Madoff’s scams, nor did he have prior knowledge of them.

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4. Romney seriously considered Chris Christie as running mate but rejected Christie because of too many concerns about him that he uncovered during his background check. Sadly, those specific concerns are never revealed to us.

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3. The authors see 3 “A” list candidates for Republican presidential nominee for 2016: Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, and Paul Ryan. They wrote this before the recent Christie scandals. So Bush and Ryan may now be the only two real contenders.

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2. The authors both think that it’s most likely that our next president will be Hillary Clinton. Interestingly, as senator, she was the most bipartisan member of congress in terms of working with both sides. But as First Lady, she’s the most polarizing political figure, since Democratic voters like her a lot, while Republican voters hate her with the white hot passion of a thousand suns.

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1. They see Bill Clinton’s speech at the Democratic convention as the turning point of the election. There was an unprecedentedly huge change in polling numbers after Clinton’s speech, and so it was all basically over at that point for Romney. Interestingly, when Obama thanked people after the election in his speech, he did not thank Bill Clinton . . .

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Extra: Romney is very likable and impressive, more so if you meet him. He just wasn’t able to successfully convey that to the public.